Web
by Bytes
Summary: Ignorance is bliss, but it also has the power to blind. Dante may be the only one in a hundred miles who can truly see, but do others even want to know the truth? Reads like a mystery; contains original characters. Set in Texas.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Web

Story Summary: Dante is commissioned by a wealthy Texas rancher to rid the area of a violent demon. Sounds straightforward, but little is what it seems when Dante uncovers what lies beneath the surface of this seemingly simple case…

Chapter 01

* * *

Enzo had told him to pack lightly, but he didn't say it would be this _hot_.

As Dante jumped out of the helicopter and onto the tarmac of his newest client's private landing strip, he felt sweat burst from all of his pores like water from Old Faithful. White hair soon turned dark as it clung wetly to his neck and cheeks, and even though the walk to the huge colonial-style mansion was not even one hundred yards, he felt exhausted by the time he made it onto the screened in back porch. Several tables had been set up in the porch's shade, and with a grunt he threw himself into one and stripped off his customary leather gloves. Fans that did little to relieve the heat circled lazily overhead, and bees buzzed in the well-tended flowerbeds that circled the landing pad.

The two glass doors behind Dante that led into the house itself burst open, but Dante did not turn around to welcome whoever had walked through. "It's hot," he said in lieu of greeting. "You didn't mention that it would be so damn hot."

A man in well worn (yet obviously designer label) jeans and a button-up plaid shirt rounded Dante's chair. His eyes—hardened chips of cloudy jade—assessed Dante with cold scrutiny that did not match the climate.

"It's a West Texas August. What did you expect, snow?" Then his lips curled into a smile and he held out a hand. "The name's Oakland. You're Dante."

Dante took the hand and shook it. "I hear you have a little problem. What can I do for you?"

Oakland didn't say anything as he took a seat across the table and pulled a black walkie-talkie out of the waistband of his jeans. "Bring me the photographs," he said into the receiver, "and a pitcher of lemonade." Then he set the walkie-talkie on the table and leaned back in his chair.

Dante took a moment to study the man. Oakland had a lean face that had been handsome at one point, but years of harsh sun and heat had browned his skin and beaten out any of the beauty he once possessed. Now he looked worn, tough, and ordinary—like any of the middle-aged ranchers scattered across Texas. His eyes, however, held a look so keen and cold that Dante had no doubts about who he was dealing with. Oakland was dangerous, driven, and—if the house and helicopter were any indication—wealthy. And wealthy people were often the most desperate ones.

"I'm a practical man," Oakland said. "Calling someone of your profession was… difficult."

"I get that a lot," Dante said, lips quirking.

"I'll bet you do," said Oakland. He leaned toward Dante across the table. "But I've got a problem. A big one. And I need your help no matter what I think about your business."

The doors behind Dante opened again. A young blonde woman in a yellow sundress and white high heels stepped onto the porch. In her hands was a silver tray bearing a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses, and tucked under her arm was a manila envelope.

"Dante, meet my wife, Katherine," Oakland said, rising to give her a kiss on the cheek.

Dante tipped an imaginary hat at her, and she blushed as she set down the tray and handed the envelopes to her husband. Oakland patted her arm when he saw her staring at Dante and said "Run along, now."

She left, shooting glances at Dante over her shoulder.

"Now to business," Oakland said. He poured the lemonade, and Dante wasted no time in chugging his share and pouring himself some more. Meanwhile, Oakland opened the manila folder and began spreading photographs on the table. "I want to get your opinion on what we're dealing with. Look here."

Dante set down his glass and picked up a photo. He squinted, trying to make out what he was looking at. "This one's grainy," he said.

"I'm afraid they all are. We can't get too close. It gets… violent."

Dante shot his employer a look before picking up another photograph. It was clearer than the first, though not by much, and what Dante saw made his eyes widen. "How were these taken?"

"By helicopter."

"And how big do you think it is?"

"Maybe thirty feet tall and forty wide. The tentacles make things hard to see."

Dante felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. Sweat that had nothing to do with the heat dotted his cheeks and ran into his five o'clock shadow. "That's huge," he said in a low voice, "but what kind of problems is it causing? Something this big probably doesn't move around much."

Oakland nodded. "It moves very slowly, but it's killing my cattle… and worse."

"Define 'worse.'"

Oakland regarded Dante with calm eyes. "Are you willing to take it out for me?"

"You still haven't defined 'worse' for _me_."

Oakland stood up. Dante noticed that he had not touched his lemonade, but despite this he was unmarked by perspiration. "Come with me," the man said. "I'll show you 'worse.'"

Oakland led Dante into the house, Dante shooting his second glass of unfinished lemonade a wistful look as he left his seat. However, the inside of the house was cool and dim—the ceilings were more than twenty feet high, and the height created refreshing drafts since the warm air rose to the top of the rooms instead of lurking along the floor. As they walked through a large room filled with museum-style cases and displays, Oakland's wealth became even more apparent. Dante paused to admire a glass case full of old guns and rusted metal circles attached to brightly colored ribbons.

Oakland, seeing his guest's inspection, remarked: "I collect Civil War paraphernalia. Those are genuine antique guns and medals."

Dante chuckled. "They're cool, but I'm not too interested. What exactly did you want to show me?"

With a smile that did not quite reach his eyes, Oakland walked to the case Dante had been inspecting. He pulled a key out of his pocket and opened the case. Dante watched in fascination as Oakland reached in, rotated an ancient revolver ninety degrees counterclockwise, and said "Step back." A machine beneath the floor made the wood under Dante's boots rumble, and a section of wall to the right of the case slid upward and out of sight. Behind it lay a dark staircase made of metal that disappeared into the ground.

"I keep it down here," Oakland said, stepping into the secret doorway. "Follow me, if you would."

Dante trailed after him, noting that the hallway was lined with metal and that the stairs were heavily reinforced with steel rivets. "Pretty heavy-duty," he remarked. "I didn't know cattle ranchers needed bunkers like these."

Oakland laughed. "I'm not a cattle rancher—not entirely, anyway."

Dante waited for him to continue, but Oakland didn't say anything else on the subject and Dante let it drop. He didn't really want to know.

The stairs only descended about thirty feet, and at their termination a large door with multiple locks had been installed. Standing at maybe ten feet tall, the steel-bound monster could have withstood a blast from a tank.

Dante felt a touch nervous at that realization—what was Oakland hiding that needed such a cage?

"You'll need this," Oakland said, startling Dante. He had raided a closet set in the wall next to the door that Dante had not noticed, and was holding out a thick, fur-lined coat. "I found that cold keeps it mostly inactive. It's ten-below-zero past this door."

Dante did as he said and took the coat. "Pretty fancy setup you got here."

Oakland shrugged. "I'm wealthy," he said, "and I like to play." He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and went about unlocking the door. The massive slab swung open very slowly, letting out a blast of frigid air.

"You weren't kidding about the cold," Dante murmured, zipping up his coat. His leather outfit—while a curse outdoors—was perfect for the vault.

Oakland smiled, then gestured into the room beyond.

Dante entered it. It was very dark, and just as his eyes were getting used to the gloom Oakland snapped on the overhead lights. Dante blinked owlishly in the glare, then felt his heart begin to pound when the contents of the room swam into focus.

In front of his was a large glass panel that you could find in any typical zoo. But behind it, instead of a terrarium filled with greenery and foliage, there was nothing but bare white tile and a collection of hoses bound to the ceiling and walls. They constantly spouted gouts of snow and ice onto the creature lying in the middle of the tank's floor, a creature bound by chains as thick around as a man's thigh.

"What the hell is that thing?" Dante asked.

"It was a cow, once," Oakland replied. "One of my prized steer. The thing in the photos infected it. I've lost two herds of cattle like this."

"Where are the other infected?"

"Killed 'em," said Oakland simply. "They don't like fire much."

Dante could see why. The cow—or, the thing that had been a cow—was riddled with thorns. It was as if a plant had rooted in the cow's midsection and grown outward: thorns poked through the skin, eyes, and mouth. But more than that, it was as if the cow's skeleton had been warped—not that Dante knew too much about cows, but damn, the thing was grotesque! The head was too large for the body; the legs too thin. Roots that had been twisted into sharp thorns protruded from the skin above the cow's hoof, and more talon-like protuberances had ripped open the creature's stomach in a writhing mass of feelers and thorny vines. It twitched pitifully on the ground, rasping distressed noises deep in its throat.

"Ugly motherfucker," Dante muttered. He turned to Oakland. "I've got questions. Have you tried any black magic recently?"

"I don't believe in that stuff," Oakland said, shrugging.

"Well, does any of your family believe in it?"

Oakland shook his head. "I doubt that."

Dante crossed his arms over his chest. Damn it was cold in there! "Are any of your neighbors experiencing weird shit?"

"Not that I know of."

Dante frowned. So that huge thing was isolated to the Oakland place? Demons—even the huge sedentary ones like in the photograph—tended to cover as much ground as they could, spreading their kin and kind over a vast territory. Even smaller demons had a system—smaller demons travelled in packs, packs controlled a territory… but large demons like this would not confine themselves to one place. It was almost as if…

"Do you have enemies that would like to see you dead?" Dante asked. "Your demon isn't behaving normally. I think it was summoned."

Oakland laughed a loud, hearty laugh. "I've got more enemies than I can name," he said, smiling, "but I don't know of any that would do something like this. They're more… mundane." His smile melted into a contemplative look. "So it's a demon, huh."

Dante nodded. "Definitely. I've seen demons like this before—the thing in the picture injected your cows with seeds that bind them to the bigger thing's will. Take out the big one, all the little ones will die. Should be pretty simple, provided you got the package my broker sent you."

Dante was referring to the crate Enzo had sent to Oakland the day before Dante had gotten on the man's helicopter. It contained Dante's favorite broadsword, Rebellion, as well as several lesser Devil's Arms and guns. Ebony and Ivory he had kept on his person, under the tails of his red leather jacket.

Oakland said: "I got it this morning."

"Good. I'll need it before I go after this thing. Where is it, exactly?"

Oakland gestured back toward the door they came through. "Your stuff is on the second floor. I got a room ready for you."

Dante started to head up the stairs. "Thanks. If you'll show me on a map just about where this thing is, I'll go after your little problem—" he let the word hang in the air for a moment for effect "—in the morning." His breath frosted in the sub-zero air. "That soon enough for you?"

Oakland smiled at him, but the expression was manufactured, and Dante realized that this one man was colder than the tank they stood in.

" 'course it is," Oakland said. His faded green eyes seemed to glow. "Why wouldn't it be?"

* * *

_So I'm bad at beginnings, but I think I got all the initial info down. Dante has a job in Texas, flies down there, and meets his employer. If you have trouble understanding what's going on, please let me know. Keep in mind, though, that more will be revealed every chapter, so you might want to wait until the next installment to ask really plot-heavy questions._

_Also keep in mind that this story is meant to be read almost like a mystery novel, with bit by bit being uncovered until the truth behind everything is reveled. The title of the story reflects the web of lies, half-truths, and misdirections Dante will encounter on his journey._


	2. Chapter 2

Web

Chapter 2

* * *

The job had started off like any other—Enzo had been contacted by the client (Oakland, in this case) and had told Dante about it the impending mission. He then progressed to begging, bribing, manipulating, shaming, and flattering the devil hunter, but when none of that worked to persuade Dante to take the flight to Texas, Enzo had used the one thing Dante was in need of: cash. Lots and lots of cash. Oakland was willing to pay top dollar for Dante's particular brand of service—eight digits of top dollar, in fact. Dante, as much as he didn't want to leave his homey office and easy chair, couldn't turn this chance down.

"You'll be livin' like a king when you get home," Enzo had gloated when Oakland's up-front money arrived with a cheerful 'ping!' in Dante's online bank account. "Just be sure to do good on the job and get the rest of the money!"

Dante, remembering the scene, had to suppress a snarl of frustration. He wasn't doing the mission justice at all. In fact, he was 100% lost beneath a cloudless Texas sky.

Not that the day had been entirely bad, however—he had risen early, polished his weaponry, and suited up with zero problems. Oakland had treated him to a breakfast fit for a king, supplied him with maps, a pickup truck, and enough water and food to last Dante a week. The man then pointed Dante in the right direction with a smile and said, "Follow the cow trails marked on the map until the brush gets too thick. Ditch the truck and go on foot the rest of the way. It shouldn't be too hard to find, what with the maps and the compass and all."

Then the two of them waved goodbye, and Dante promised to be back by sundown.

_So much for sundown,_ Dante thought as he waded through waist-high brambles. He had ditched the truck at about noon, amazed at how far away his destination was. Oakland's ranch was huge! Dante had known that, of course, because Oakland had told him so the night before, but it still left him a little open-mouthed to see it stretch on and on firsthand.

Rising the crest of a low hill, Dante stumbled out of the brambles he had been embroiled in and found himself looking over a vast stretch of dry brown scrub. The hills were populated by wiry mesquite trees and plate cactus, atop which small red bulbs grew like tumors out of needle sharp thorns.

"All of it looks the same," Dante muttered. "It looked so easy on the map. Speaking of which…" He drew the map out of his pocket, but was at a loss to read it. Thinking back on the morning's conversation with Oakland, Dante searched for a clue he could use to find the demon (or the truck, not that he was picky at this point).

Oakland had spread the map—a large khaki piece of paper covered in a grid and outline of Oakland's territory—with a flourish. He had then marked a large 'x' shape over the southwestern corner of it with a red pen and said: "That's about where the demon is, right on my southwestern border." He had traced a line under the 'x' with a finger slowly, following the route of his territory line. "I border the Jamison place at the south, but there have been no reports of any… _activity _down there."

"Are you sure?" Dante had asked. "I mean, those infected cows might've spread. If it's all right with you, I think I'd like to talk to the Jamiso—"

Oakland had interrupted Dante at that point, his green eyes flashing. "It's _not_ all right with me," he had hissed. "You are _not_ to bring them into this, understand?"

Dante's hands had shot up into the air in a defensive gesture. "Sheesh, I won't see them, then! Chill!"

Oakland's temper had subsided as quickly as it emerged. "I apologize," he had said, scrubbing a hand over his face. "It's just they don't like outsiders very much, and they like me even less."

Dante had then nodded, trying not to show that his interest had been peaked. "Got it," he had said, and continued asking about the map.

The rest of the conversation had gone on without a hitch, but Dante—as he struggled with the map and tried his best to figure out exactly where in the Sam Hill he _was_—couldn't help but wonder at Oakland's adamancy regarding leaving the Jamison place alone. Could the Jamisons possibly know something Oakland wasn't telling Dante? If the demon proved to be too difficult to extricate, it might be good to go against Oakland's wishes and speak to them. After all, Oakland—if Enzo's information was correct—was a cutthroat business man. What did he care about a hermit's privacy? The only reason to hide Jamison would be if Jamison knew something Oakland didn't want Dante to know—right?

That logic suited Dante just fine, and as he stumbled down the hill and into the underbrush, he resolved to talk to the Jamisons, regardless. Oakland was an interesting man. Dante would like to know what he got into.

Dante continued on through the brush and cactus for a while, unable to make head or tail of his map and compass. The scenery was the single most boring thing he had ever witnessed in his life: cactus upon mesquite upon scrub as far as he could see. Sun bleached the color out of everything. He had shed a few pieces of his typical leather outfit to account for the heat, but he was sweating horribly nonetheless, causing the lather to stick to him in uncomfortable, smelly places. He wanted a bath more than anything. Every time he wiped the sweat on his brow away, a fresh wave burst forth and rolled into his eyes.

Pausing amid a bed of cacti to rub his eyes clear, he shaded his cobalt eyes against the sun with a hand and peered ahead of him. Nothing but brush. He turned a little to his left and squinted again—nothing unusual. Then he turned to the right and squinted, and found himself looking at something that was definitely _not_ brush: a waist high barbed wire fence.

Making his way over to it, he felt relief bubble up in him. Civilization at last, he thought, then felt his heart sink when he saw a metal "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign hanging by a single wire from one of the fence's posts.

"God dammit," Dante cursed, reaching for the sign. He jerked his fingers back with a yelp when they encountered the hot metal plate and popped them in his mouth; they tasted like grime and salt, and he spit them out immediately. "I finally find a way to get _somewhere_ that isn't here, and I can't use it." His eyes lit up deviously. "Or maybe…"

Looking around like a schoolboy about to pull a prank, Dante drew Ivory out of its holster in a lightning-fast motion and assailed the offending sign in a barrage of bullets. The sound of gunfire echoed across the hot, still plains, and the sign fell to the ground, smoking and full of holes.

"Sign?" Dante asked aloud. "What sign? I didn't see any sign!" Taking a few steps back, he ran at the fence and jumped over it with one of his trademark super-leaps. "Nope, no sign for me." He began to head in a direction he assumed to be south, whistling a tune.

He had to stop for a rest a few minutes later; it was too hot to go on, and that jump had taken too much of his energy. Choosing to sit beneath the scant shade cast by an overgrown mesquite, he inspected his custom-made boots and found a myriad of scratches, gouges, and tears all over the tooled leather.

"I though cowboys were _supposed_ to wear boots," he moaned, trying to rub out the marks with his thumb. A moment later, however, Dante didn't care about the boots in the slightest—the unmistakable sound of a truck engine floated to him over the air, and with a whoop he leapt to his feet and crashed headlong into the scrub. The sound was easy to follow, and after a minute of intense running he came upon two wheel ruts that had been carved into the ground: an unmistakable ranch road. Not long after that, a battered white pickup truck spattered in dust and mud trundled into view.

Dante moved to the center of the road, waving his arms over his head. "Hey, stop!" he yodeled. "Can I get a ride? I'm lost!"

The truck slowed to a stop, but no one got out to greet the red-clad devil hunter. The engine idled, grumbling like a beast, but the sunlight glinting off the windshield kept Dante from seeing the occupant.

"Um… hello?" Dante called.

The driver's door opened, and a dog whose flanks reached Dante's hip lunged out of the truck cab. The beast—it was a beast, definitely, definitely a beast—growled low in its throat before running headlong at Dante.

Dante was not a coward. In fact, he prided himself on his steel-bound nerves and unflappable demeanor. However, in the face of a dog that was easily heavier than Dante himself and whose teeth were as long as Dante's fingers, he felt that making a tactical retreat was not an act of cowardice, but intelligence. He felt no shame in spinning on his heel and taking off down the road; neither did he feel ashamed when two paws the size of dinner plates pressed into his back and knocked him to the ground.

Dante crouched into a roll as he went down, landing on his back with every intention of getting up to do battle with the insane dog. But before he could get to his feet or draw Rebellion out of its holster, the dog had put its front paws on either side of Dante's head and was growling in the devil hunter's face.

"Easy, doggy," Dante said, trying to smile. The thing's face was a patchwork of brown and gray spots, lots of teeth, and gold eyes that spoke of violence and a foul temperament. "Easy, easy…"

The beast growled, lowering its face so it and Dante were nose to nose.

A voice came from the direction of the truck. "King," it said, "heel."

'King' immediately hopped off of Dante and trotted back to its owner. Dante sat up, ready to glare the human into submission, but his glare died when he saw the shotgun in their hands.

"Whoa, slow down," he said.

"Hands in the air!" the gun-holder barked.

Dante smiled his most charming smile. "Now, now, this is all just a big misunderstanding—"

The shotgun roared, and the patch of road next to Dante erupted into a geyser of dust. "I said t' get yer hands up!" they barked again, and Dante noticed that their country accent was much thicker than Oakland's. "I heard gunfire. Was that you?"

"Yes," Dante admitted, thinking of the sign he had blasted to bits and the fact that his two guns were plainly visible, "but—look, I'm not here to make trouble," he said slowly, hands on the rise, "I'm just—"

"Shut up n' stand up," the gunman barked, and Dante did so. "What's yer name?"

"Dante."

"And where're you from?"

"Not here."

The gunman paused and corrected their previous statement. "_Why_'re you here, then?"

Dante shrugged. "Oh, you know, sightseeing, cow-tipping, demon slaying…"

The gun barrel dropped for a second, then rose. "Think you're bein' funny?" the gunman hissed. "This is private property. You didn't see the sign?"

Dante tried not to look guilty. "Sign? What sign?"

"The sign on the fence, dipshit."

"Nope."

The gunman said nothing, and Dante felt compelled to do a little explaining. Firearms in the face were a good incentive.

"Well," said Dante, "you see, I wouldn't have come here at all, but I'm lost. Really lost. So why don't you lower the gun and drive me to the main road, and—"

"Not a chance. You're one of Oakland's guys."

Dante's hands dropped. "How do you know?"

They laughed. "Only _he'd_ hire city people, and you're as city as they come." The shotgun gestured off the road, away from the truck. "I'll take you back t' the Oakland property line."

"Thanks," Dante said. "I'll be sure to tell him you were a real gentleman…" The word died on his lips as the gunman lowered the shotgun in order to take the keys out of the truck's ignition. "Or should I say gentle 'lady', instead?"

The woman slipped the keys into her pocket and scowled at him. "Now don't go treatin' me any different 'cause I'm a gal, Mr. Dante."

Dante winked at her. "Never," he said, taking a good long look at her. Her hair had been tucked up under a baseball cap, and she wore threadbare denim jeans below a button-up white shirt. Her tan skin covered lean, arrogant features: a proud nose, high cheekbones, almond eyes, a strong jaw, and full lips. She was tall and thin, but it wasn't the thinness of a 'bony bulimic' runway model or anything like that—she was corded with muscle built from hard work and toil. She was also very tall; probably not much shorter than Dante, with lots of leg. An attractive package, all in all, but not exactly Dante's type. He liked them curvier and a lot less hostile.

Moving toward him, the woman—mid to late twenties in age was Dante's guess—shooed him off the road with the barrel of her gun. "I'll let you keep those weapons of yours," she said. "Just don't try anything."

"Oh, I won't," Dante said, and King the dog growled at it's master's feet. "Not with _him _breathing down my neck."

* * *

_Let me apologize now for the Texas accents in this. I'm Texan and I know what they sound like, but I don't want people to think I'm being insulting or anything. People who lived their whole lives in the country in Texas typically sound like this—I should know, I lived on a ranch for the first twelve years of my life and have a horrible accent. _

_This chapter was roughly the same size as the last one (give or take 30 words) and I think I'll continue the chapters at about this size. _

_Feedback is appreciated!_


	3. Chapter 3

Web

Chapter 3

* * *

"So," said Dante, trying to make conversation as he and his captors meandered through the brush. "What's your name?"

The woman—who was walking behind him and directing him with prods in the back via the shotgun—stopped moving. Dante turned around to look at her, face set in a quizzical expression.

"You mean you don't know?" she asked, utterly perplexed. "I thought you said you worked for Oakland."

Dante smiled at her. "He didn't mention you."

She regarded him for a long moment, eyes shaded by her baseball cap. Dante realized that her eyes were an interesting color—the color of oak leaves, or a stormy sky. Not too pretty, but interesting nonetheless. Or had he just been spoiled by Lady's incredibly colored eyes? He wasn't sure.

The woman stared at him, then shook her head and smiled—but, Dante noticed, the smile was more of a showing of teeth than an expression of true happiness. "I usually get a visit from one of his thugs this time of the month. Guess I jumped the gun." She stopped baring her incisors in favor of frowning. "What'd you say he hired you for?"

Dante fidgeted. "I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."

"Try me." Her eyes were cool.

"There's… a demon on his property," Dante finally admitted. "He hired me to kill it."

The woman stared at him, unblinking, before prodding his shoulder with the gun again. "You're right, I _don't_ believe you. Now keep walkin'."

_At least she didn't call me crazy,_ Dante thought as he started walking. "You still haven't told me your name," he said, stumbling over the brush.

Behind him, King growled. "Settle down," the woman whispered. She didn't respond to Dante for another few minutes, but eventually replied: "It's Jess."

"Jess… Jamison?"

"I thought you said Oakland hadn't told you 'bout me."

Dante shrugged. "He told me that the Jamison place bordered his to the south and that they didn't like outsiders, and since I was wandering in that direction and you seem _very_ trigger happy, I just assumed…"

"Well, you assumed right. I hate busybodies." She poked Dante around a cactus, and moments later they came upon the barbed wire fence Dante had crossed earlier. "Stop walkin'," Jess ordered as she walked in front of Dante. "King, guard!" she said to the dog trotting at her heels, and the animal immediately rounded on Dante with a snarl and a show of teeth.

Dante tried to ignore the dog as Jess vaulted over the fence by placing a hand on one of the fence posts and using it as leverage. He couldn't help but admire the way she handled the shotgun (a woman who could handle a gun and _wasn't_ Lady? Shocker!), but his respect wavered as she picked up the PRIVATE PROPERTY sign Dante had desecrated and stared at it.

"Didn't see it, huh?" she asked him, rolling her eyes and sneering. "No wonder I heard gunfire."

Dante shrugged, eliciting another growl from King. "What can I say? I'm unable to resist the call of the unknown."

Jess snorted. "Curiosity killed the cat."

"I don't see any cats."

Jess sighed. "Jump the damn fence."

Dante did so with ease, King snapping at his heels to hurry him along. "Well, thanks for the escort—" he said, walking past Jess.

She cocked the gun, effectively cutting Dante off. "Not so fast," she barked. "I'm takin' you to a road."

"I can handle it from here."

"No, you can't. You'll get lost again and come wanderin' back, and I don't wanna have to deal with you again."

Dante sighed but did not argue. "Fine, whatever. My truck is somewhere north of here." Realizing he still had the maps and that Jess would be more likely to know how to use them, he began to fumble for them in the lining of his coat.

"Stop!" Jess shouted, and fired a shell at Dante's feet.

The devil hunter danced back as if he were walking on coals. "Hey! I have a map in my coat!" Then his eyes widened as he saw something moving in the brush behind Jess.

"Don't make me laugh," Jess said, oblivious to everything but Dante. "You were going for a weapon!"

King, at Dante's feet, sniffed the air. Then he turned around to face Jess, growling deep in his throat as he lowered himself into a 'ready to attack' stance.

"King?" Jess asked, eyes widening. Then she looked back at Dante, whose hands were creeping toward the guns behind his back. "Stop or I'll shoot!"

Dante was too quick for her. Drawing Ebony and Ivory out of their holsters, he leveled the two guns and aimed them straight at Jess. She froze as bullets whizzed past both her ears and collided with the hulking monster that had been attempting to sneak up on her—Dante immediately recognized it as one of the cows infected by the giant demon. The thing let out a howl of frustration and rage as blood and clear liquid poured out of the wounds in its shoulders; it immediately toppled to the ground and collided with Jess' legs. She went down on her face with a cry of surprise and fear, pinned beneath the demon as it thrashed in pain.

Dante ran forward immediately, King leading the way. The dog lunged and grabbed the demon's neck in his powerful jaws; his teeth crunched through bone and muscle with sickening ease. The monster struggled, crying out in an unearthly wail, but was instantly silenced by a bullet Dante fired directly into its brain. It stopped moving, and King released the demon's neck.

"Hold on, Jess," Dante grunted as he flipped the demon carcass off of her. King, for once, didn't growl when Dante grabbed Jess by the elbows and hauled her to her feet. Her face had gone white, and her knees shook.

"You weren't kiddin' about the demon thing, were you?" she asked, eyes fixed on the monster at her feet. Fear and shock turned to indignation and rage as she asked: "Is that a cow?"

Dante nodded. "Demons infect them and use the bodies to fight. Kind of like a parasite."

Jess, ignoring him, knelt by the carcass and touched an area of the cow skin that the demon's plant-like protuberances had not ruined. On it was a large burn mark—a brand, Dante realized, in the shape of three intertwined 'J's.

"This is _my_ cow!" Jess snarled. "_My _brand! It's killin' _my cows_!" She looked up at Dante with a fire in her eyes. "Take me to it," she ordered, grabbing the discarded shotgun, "and I'll kill this thing myself!"

* * *

_I know it's a lot shorter than the others, but I felt this was a good stopping point. We're getting to know Jess a little bit better—we found out her name, for one thing, and her paranoid tendencies, for another._

_I'd like to thank Dhuaine and Joe & Gromit for their good advice, and Joe for adding me to a cool C2. Neat-o. See ya'll around._

EDIT:

_Um. If you review anonymously, leave me an email address or something (or email me it or whatever you normally do). _

_Since you didn't leave me one, 'Jess Rengel,' here's your reply: Funny that you have my character's name, and the summary you see now is my newest one. Does that one not work either? Crap. _

_Anyway, end of edit. Bye._


	4. Chapter 4

Web

Chapter 4

* * *

_How did I get myself into this mess?_ Dante asked himself as he followed Jess and King deep into a thicket of mesquite trees. _That's it, I am officially the king of mess making. Every mission it's the same thing—mess, mess, mess!_

Dante had been very against Jess accompanying him, but she had been persuasive. Very persuasive. Her points ran as follows: one, her cows were being killed, and it was her responsibility as their owner to kick their killer's ass. Two, Dante owed her for getting her involved in this mess (there was that word again) in the first place. Three, Dante would never be able to find the demon on his own, and four—which was perhaps the most important point of them all—Jess swore to kill Dante and feed him to King if he left without her.

But there _were_ some good points to this, Dante decided as Jess stood in the shade of a brittle pecan tree and puzzled over the map. He'd find the demon, finally, and Jess wasn't bad to look at, so… And hey, if things went_ really_ well, it was likely that she wouldn't be adverse to answering some questions regarding Oakland, and maybe if Dante played his cards right, Jess would let him buy her a drink or three after everything was said and done.

Who knew, really? Maybe this trip to Texas wouldn't turn out so bad, after all.

"We're not too far from the 'x' on the map," Jess said after a few minutes. "A half-hour walk, and if we're lucky we'll get there and get the job done before the sun sets. I don't wanna get trapped in the dark with any more of those things."

"Wait, what time is it?" Dante asked. It was perfectly bright outside and the sun did not seem close to setting, but Dante had no idea what time it was and couldn't be sure.

"'Round six thirty or so," Jess answered. When Dante balked, she added: "Sun sets at eight thirty this time of the year."

"Oh." Dante—not knowing what else to say and feeling decidedly ignorant—fidgeted before asking: "Which way do we go?"

"This way," said Jess as she started off. "C'mon, King." The dog loped at her heels, tongue lolling out of his mouth comically.

"King's kind of cute when he's not growling," Dante remarked, following them. King immediately turned around and snarled at Dante, then continued to prance alongside his mistress. Jess patted his head a few times before the dog licked her fingers and darted off into the undergrowth.

"He's a good companion," Jess said, battling her way through the mesquite. "Never talks back to me."

Dante—wisely—chose to say nothing to that.

Dante and Jess waded through the undergrowth for half an hour. King took a different route, but stayed close enough so that every now and then the bushes nearby would rustle from his passing. Dante soon realized that he hated the silence, and questions began to bubble in his mind.

"So why the beef with Oakland?" he finally asked, unable to hold back.

Jess didn't slow down, but she _did_ throw him an annoyed look over her shoulder as she said "Who _wouldn't_ have beef with a man like him?"

"What do you mean?"

She said nothing, for a time, then responded with slow, even words. "Oakland's daddy showed up 'round here before I was even born," she said, "back when my mama was my age. He came from a rich family—city folk, lawyers or somethin'—and thought that havin' a ranch out here would be a helluva lotta fun. So he started buyin' up all the land from here to Hell, drivin' people off their property and puttin' 'em out of business so he could have his little pleasure-ranch." She shot Dante a proud look, a look that set fires smoldering in her oak-leaf eyes, but the expression was tempered with sadness and the slow-burning embers of long kept-rage. "Ranchers've got it rough. It's hard to keep up with commercial farms. People like Oakland—people who didn't work a damn day in their life for what they have, and people who think it's their God given right to walk all over honest country folk—well, they don't make it any easier."

The brush had begun to even out. "I think we're gettin' close," Jess told Dante, and Dante put his questions aside. King had stopped his frolicking and was sticking close to Jess' heels, head down and shoulders tense.

Dante, once he stretched out his senses, could sense the demon's colossal power radiating from a hundred yards ahead of them. "Let me do the killing, Jess," he told her. "I don't think you'll be able to handle this."

"And I suppose that sword of yours can do a job better than this?" Jess asked, hefting her shotgun pointedly. "Well, we'll see about that."

The party stumbled into a patch of shade beneath a copse of mesquite trees. The trees bordered a large brush clearing, and Jess' words died on her lips when the demon loomed into view over the scraggled treetops.

Dante's eyes bugged out of his head when he saw it. It was huge, the pictures not doing it any justice. It looked sort of like a giant octopus, but instead of a bulbous sack of flesh on top there was an obese humanoid head and shoulders with a wide scar of a mouth, a flat nose, and sagging basset hound eyes. Two chubby hands tipped in claws made of twisted wood protruded from the mass of vines beneath the head. It was as if macabre sculptor had taken the torso of an obese, rotting human baby and laid it atop a pile of writhing vines that were so thick they looked like tentacles.

The demon was also very green, and Dante found that the huge green obese baby wasn't as frightening as he had first thought. Big, yes, intimidating, maybe, but scary? Not unless you were scared of toddlers with bad complexions.

Jess, on the other hand, was more impressed. The shotgun she had been carrying swung loose from her limp fingers, and her face had paled considerably. Dante didn't fail to note, however, that Jess did not cry, run, or scream at the sight of the monstrous demon—she just snapped her fingers and buried her hand in King's fur when he responded to her call.

That was another good thing that came out of this situation, Dante decided: it was rare to find a human so ready and willing to adjust to the knowledge that yes, demons did exist, which therefore made Jess a possibly valuable ally who would keep a cool head in this situation.

Jess promptly leaned over from the waist and threw up onto the ground. Dante's nose wrinkled. OK, so maybe she wasn't as accepting as he first thought. Still, a bit of vomit was nothing compared to some of the reactions he'd seen.

His admiration returned a little when Jess propped herself up by putting her hands on her thighs, turned her head to Dante, and gave him a ferocious glare. "So how do we take it down?" she asked, voice shaky but tone resolute. The shade from the baseball cap couldn't hide the fire in her eyes.

"That's the spirit," Dante said. He motioned her forward, and the two of them crawled on their bellies through the underbrush. King followed in a similar manner, and Dante would have laughed if the demon hadn't been so close.

"I'll go out and engage it alone," Dante told her, watching as the thing lifted one of its huge tentacles—the appendage had the diameter of a car!—and uprooted a small wealth of trees with a gentle tug. "I'm used to battling things like this. You're not."

Jess snorted (and was about to reply in the negative if her expression was any indication) but her reply was cut short by the arrival of a herd of rangy steer that stumbled into the demon's clearing. They mooed frantically, sweating hysterical foam, and one of the plant-infected cows came screaming after them. Before Jess or Dante could react, the cow demon leapt upon its forgotten brothers in a frenzy, tearing at them with its wooden fangs and claws. Three steer lay dead in an instant, disemboweled, but the rest had the bad luck to run straight at the giant demon itself.

The demon reacted in a way that made Dante's skin crawl: it giggled. Not the deep sort of giggle one would expect from a monster of its size, but a deranged, high pitched simpering _giggle _you'd expect from an unpleasant old woman. It giggled madly as it ensnared the frightened cows in its tentacles and squeezed a few of them in half; the rest it held up to its infantile face and rheumy eyes for inspection.

"Ugly beasts," the demon giggled. Ropey drool snaked from the corners of its mouth. "Ugly human world beasts! I'll make you much prettier, never you fret." Its lipless mouth curled into a very toothy grin before opening wide—wide, wider, widest, until it stretched larger than what looked possible. Like a snake, the demon's head appeared to split completely in half.

_Its head must be all jaw,_ Dante thought as the mouth opened ever wider. His stomach turned as a huge plant erupted from the demon's throat: a mammoth flower bud, livid yellow, which writhed as if in pain when it split into quarters and bloomed with a spray of stinking liquid. Vines shot out of the flower's heart and forced themselves down the captive cows' throats, and the steer struggled valiantly for a moment before going limp. The demon retracted the vines and swallowed the flower with a gurgling sound that made bile rise in Dante's throat, then dropped the cows to the ground with a thud.

Beside Dante, Jess made as if to bolt toward the fallen cows.

"No!" Dante hissed, grabbing her elbow to hold her back. "Let me handle this!"

Jess' glare was made of pure hatred. "It's killing them!" she said, and threw off Dante's hand. Dante grabbed at her, scattering dust in the air when his arm came crashing down on the ground, but Jess was too quick and blundered off into the underbrush and out of sight.

Dante cursed, kicking himself for losing her, then realized that King hadn't followed his mistress. He was still crouched low on the ground beside Dante, golden eyes regarding the devil hunter with an unsettling intensity.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Dante snapped, pushing the dog away. He almost hoped the dog would try to bite him so he could have the satisfaction of putting a bullet through the pain-in-the-ass mutt's skull. "Follow her!"

King didn't even growl—he only looked at Dante with an expression so aware that Dante couldn't help but narrow his eyes at the beast in suspicion.

"You're one weird dog," Dante said. He shook his head, laughing at himself. "Look at me, talking to a dog." He shooed the animal away with his hands. "Go on, get out of here—follow Jess. I'm going to have to create a distraction before she does something stupid." He stood up, as did King, the latter of whom issued a low, booming bark before disappearing into the undergrowth in a shadow of sable and tawny fur.

Dante watched him go with a furrowed brow. That dog was smart—too smart, perhaps? Whatever. The job would be over soon, and he'd never see King, Oakland, or Jess again—and good riddance, too. This was too much of a mess (that word _again_!) for Dante. It was freaking ridiculous!

Drawing Ebony and Ivory from their holsters, Dante spun them in his hands before sprinting headlong out of his hiding place. "Hey, baby face!" he bellowed, kicking up dirt as he fired a volley of rounds in the giant demon's direction. The sunlight felt warm on his face after the shade he had been lingering under, and his grin flashed silver in the sunlight. "I've got a present for ya!"

* * *

_This was about 2000 words. What's the best length for a chapter on this site? Feedback (general or otherwise) is appreciated._

_Oh, and the baby-shaped demon gets worse. Much worse._


	5. Chapter 5

Web

Chapter 5

* * *

Dante was discouraged to note that his bullets merely sank into the demon's fatty flesh and disappeared, but he could not waste much time thinking about it when the cow demon from earlier ran headlong at him, braying loudly and looking ready to kill.

He jumped to the side and dodged the demon's attack; it came to a screeching halt, but the dusty ground provided little traction and it ended up skidding into the trees Dante had earlier hidden himself in. The devil hunter smirked and pointed Ebony and Ivory at the large baby-demon in front of him, but although he appeared nonchalant and unconcerned, he made sure to keep an ear out for the cow's eventual approach from behind.

"Now don't go sending your little minions after me!" Dante complained as the giant demon made a laborious turn toward him. "I've got high standards, you know. This isn't a good way to begin our first date."

The demon's eyes goggled so far out of its face that Dante had to wonder why they didn't fall out completely. "Ugly human," it hissed, spittle flying from its mouth.

"Now, now, don't overdo it with the compliments or I might think you just wanna get in my pants," Dante said, laughing. "Now let's see… if I'm 'ugly human,' then what's _your _name? 'Giant mucusy blob'? 'Tentacle rape'?"

The demon's tentacles promptly lashed out and struck at Dante, but the devil hunter was quick on his feet and managed to leap out of the way. "Die!" the demon screeched, kicking up a veritable sandstorm with its flailing. Dante fired experimental cascades of bullets at the monster, but the skin seemed to absorb them all. Even shots to the face and eyes either bounced off or disappeared into the green flesh.

"Well, let's pick a name for keeps," Dante continued as if the previous altercation hadn't happened. "I'm digging 'Pudgers', personally. What do you think?"

'Pudgers' was not amused. "Stand still, human!" the demon screeched at Dante, and Dante complied with a grin. Three of Pudgers' huge tentacles braided themselves together and sharpened into a wicked point, then dived at Dante like a spear flying through the air.

In a flash Dante had Rebellion out of its holster and had it crossed in front of him. The demon's tentacles crashed into Dante's block with a shower of sparks, driving the devil hunter back. His heels carved ruts in the dusty ground, and he grit his teeth to keep from letting go of Rebellion. The blow had caused the metal to ring, and Dante's hands went slightly numb.

It took a few moments of struggling for Pudgers to realize it couldn't get through Dante's block. "Something isn't right with this one," it said in a sing-song voice. "Something isn't right. Too strong for human ugly, much too strong. What _is_ the little beasty?" It retraced the braided tentacle with a whipping sound, but kept it poised behind its head like a scorpion's stinger.

Dante slung Rebellion over his shoulder with a flourish of glittering metal. "Got that right, pal," he said. "I'm way more than you bargained for."

Pudgers' dinner-plate eyes narrowed. "Your scent is… familiar." Then it threw back its head and laughed, jowls flopping. "But I don't care, not one bit! Now die!"

Dante prepared to dodge whatever the demon threw at him next, but something caught his eyes.

Jess had reappeared.

She was sneaking up on the fallen cows. When she got to the nearest cow—one of the ones Pudgers had _not_ torn to shreds—she began to lift up its eyelids and check for a heartbeat. From her torn expression, Dante figured that the cow was as dead as a doornail.

Tearing his eyes away from her, Dante leapt out of the way just as Pudgers tried to stab Dante with its stinger. Unfortunately, however, Dante had been so distracted by Jess that he had not heard the cow demon soar out of the bushes behind him; it delivered a deep slash across the devil hunter's back before Dante could bolt away from both it and Pudgers.

"Do you know how much it _costs_ to patch this jacket?" he roared, digging in his heels to gain some traction. Once he found it, he launched at the cow demon and drew Rebellion. He bisected the demon's head in a single slash, then prepared to go for the ever-giggly Pudgers. Fate, however, had other plans, as he was once again distracted, this time by a cry from Jess' direction.

The cows that Pudgers had violated earlier were… twitching. Jess leaned over one, concerned, but was thrown off when it spasmed, seizure like. Thorns burst from its eyes in a spray of blood, drenching Jess as she scooted away from it on her butt.

She had the bad luck to scoot directly into another cow, which reacted to her presence by sprouting huge thorn-vines from its abdomen. The thorns lashed out at her, slicing over her back and tearing a huge gouge in her skin. She dropped her shotgun with a cry of pain and sudden fear.

Dante—having taken his eyes off Pudgers—did not block the blow from the baby-demon's stinger; it pierced his shoulder and slammed him to the ground, and Rebellion flew from his numbed fingers with a clang. Once on the ground, Dante had the good sense to draw and shoot the living _fuck_ out of the tentacle with Ebony, and as Pudgers retracted the bloody stump of its stinger with a howl of pain, Dante grabbed the tip embedded in his flesh and yanked, _hard_. It revealed itself to be hooked at the end, and Dante howled when a large chunk of his flesh was torn away.

"You are SO gonna pay for that!" Dante growled, throwing the still-twitching barb to the ground. He stomped it beneath his leather boots, taking satisfaction from the way it squelched.

Pudgers was nursing his torn tentacle when he noticed Dante's rapidly healing shoulder wound. "You… you are not human," it said, rheumy eyes bulging.

"Damn right I'm not!" Dante replied.

Suddenly, there came the sound of a demonic yowl and the roar of a beast—Dante looked to find the newly-shown-up King ripping the throat out of one of the cow demons. Jess scrambled in the dirt for the shotgun, dodging three massive cow-beasts as they leapt at her and King at random.

Pudgers—well aware of the deafening mayhem—turned to look at Jess and King. Dante wasn't too fazed that the demon had discovered Jess; he just felt glad that Pudgers hadn't noticed Jess _before _King had shown up. As King took out yet another cow demon with a bite to the spinal chord, Dante felt fairly certain that the colossal dog could more than handle whatever came at him. Jess was in good hands… well, paws, at least.

"Well, stop staring at them," Dante snapped at Pudgers when the babyish blob didn't return to battle Dante. "I'm your opponent!"

But Pudgers was ignoring Dante completely. It scented the air with its flat nose, eyes growing even wider at whatever it smelled, and Dante felt his blood run cold at its next words:

"She's here—Jessica!"

* * *

_ I just started a new fanfiction called "Mask." It's for the Yu Yu Hakusho anime/manga, and it features a BuixOC pairing. Bui is INCREDIBLY under-appreciated, so check it out and GIVE BUI A FREAKING CHANCE. Stop ogling Hiei and Kurama and try something new, why dontcha? You might even like it. Stupid fangirls.  
_

_I know this wasn't a very long chapter, but I like the way it ends so I decided to keep it. The next chapter is already written, so you won't have to wait for it for too long._

_Also, I really like Pudgers. He makes me smile and gag, often at the same time._

_So, I really appreciate feedback. I don't really give a crap about whether or not I used commas correctly—but is Dante in character? Is the action understandable, and does it flow at a good pace? Is the mystery side of this coming out OK, even though I'm only at chapter five and only 5% of the plot has so far been revealed? Are you intrigued?_

_Answer just one of these questions and you will make me a very happy woman._


	6. Chapter 6

Web

Chapter 6

* * *

_New clue alert,_ Dante thought as Pudgers began a slow, lumbering concourse toward Jess and King. _Jess is involved with demons. Now isn't that just peachy?_ Drawing Rebellion, Dante called upon his demonic strength and leapt at Pudgers with the intent of hacking the demon's head off.

Pudgers sensed him coming. The creature turned its head to shoot Dante a look of hatred before raising one of its tentacles and sweeping it at Dante in a wide, murderous arc.

_Well,_ this_ is going to hurt_, Dante thought just as the tentacle smashed him to the ground. The wind rushed from his chest, and Dante lay panting for breath as Pudgers once again began its slow waddle toward Jess and King.

"Wait a second!" Dante gasped, sitting up. His ribs crackled, fractured from the hit, and he winced in pain. "I'm not done with you!"

Pudgers' head whipped around, pulling an _Exorcist_-esque one-eighty degree turn. It opened its mouth as wide as it could go and vomited a stream of viscous brown liquid straight at Dante.

The liquid—which was more of a sap than anything—collided with Dante in a roiling wave of stink and goo. Rebellion flew from his fingers. The force of the mucus threw him to the ground and pinned him there, surging down into the dust like roots. He tried to bat it off with his hands and succeeded only in spreading the sap farther; it immobilized him so completely that all he could do was watch as Pudgers advanced on Jessica and King, and with horror Dante realized that the sap was slowly constricting his torso, making it difficult to breathe.

King was busy with the cow demons—more had swarmed out of the brush to do battle with the hulking dog, but King showed no sign of slowing down. Jess stood with her back to Pudgers, and it was painfully obvious to Dante that she trusted the devil hunter to deal with the big demon. Her only concern was with King's well being—she fired rounds from her shotgun at the demons teeming around her companion, shouting obscenities when they went down.

Jess finally noticed Pudgers when the base of its tentacle-y body was hardly ten feet from her. She leapt backward, firing a round from her shotgun, but the shells did little in her defense when the gigantic monster leaned forward and picked her up in its chubby hands. The shotgun fell to the ground with a clatter, but it did not discharge.

"You're the one," Pudgers giggled, googly eyes locked on Jess. She gasped in the demon's fingers, face turning red as the monster held her in a crushing grip. All Dante could do, trapped as he was, was watch. "Pity, pity, but this will hurt. Please don't hate me; I only follow my master's orders."

_'My master's orders.'_ _Now isn't that interesting?_ Dante thought as the sap covering him flowed over his neck and chin. He could no longer move his jaw to speak.

Pudgers raised Jessica up so that she was inches from its leering mouth, and then it stuck out its tongue. The tongue was like nothing Dante had ever seen. Perfectly conical, it sharpened into a wicked point at its tip and was colored by alternating stripes of deep green and sickly purple. Liquids that smoked when they hit the ground dripped from it in waves of stench.

Jessica's face went very pale at the sight of it, and even though she struggled she could do little to stop Pudgers from grasping her left arm at the elbow with one of its tentacles and stretching the limb out for inspection. Then the demon drove the sharp point of its tongue into the back of Jess' hand with surprising delicacy.

Jess fell silent for a moment, then went ash-gray. Her jaw slackened as the demon's tongue began to palpate and shiver—crimson matter too luminous to be blood surged from where the tongue disappeared into her hand, and the skin around the wound began to glow like an iron in a forge.

King took out the last cow demon just as his master's hand began to shine. Letting out a roar more befitting a lion than a dog, King vaulted up Pudgers' tentacles like a set of lumpy stairs and sank his teeth into the large demon's banded tongue.

The effect was immediate. Pudgers dropped Jess with a howl and swatted King away like a fly; his tongue bled like a geyser, eyes popping out of their sockets in pain.

Jess, lying in the dust, shivered violently and pulled her desecrated hand close to her chest. Then she cried out in pain and opened her eyes to the sight of the glow in her hand spreading—vein-like bulges beneath her skin began to make their way up her arm, and Jess desperately began to paw at the latch of the belt on her jeans. She took the strip of leather and used it as a tourniquet on her arm just below her the bones in her wrist.

The pulsing red met the leather with a flash of light, and her hand swelled up to a monstrous size before deflating like a popped balloon. She screamed screams to wake the dead, and just as the mucus covered Dante's face and tried to pour into his mouth and nose, the devil hunter felt something inside himself snap.

"Bite me, will you?!" Pudgers screamed, slamming its tentacles and fists into the ground in futile attempts to squash King. "I'll teach you to bite me!"

The dog moved more nimbly than a deer, dodging every hit with grace and economy of motion, and when the dog saw a brief opening in Pudgers' barrage he took the initiative. Launching himself at the demon's face, he ravaged one dinner-plate eye with his teeth and paws before leaping away to safety outside the demon's range.

It was thanks to King's efforts that Dante was able to escape from his prison—unleashing a barrage of rage-fueled demonic energy, the devil hunter blasted the goo away from his body and bolted to his feet. He recovered Rebellion and flew at Pudgers, slamming the broadsword into the demon's back. Unlike the bullets, Rebellion worked like a dream; it cut through Pudgers' flesh like a razor through jam.

But Pudgers was not going to go down after a single hit. Blood pouring from its empty eye socket and from the wound in his back, Pudgers made a grab at Dante and succeeded in securing him in the fold of one of its tentacles. "Why won't you die?!" Pudgers screeched, and threw back its head. The flower burst from its gaping maw again, only this time Pudgers did not infect any cows with it. He tossed Dante up into the air, wrapped him in the vines that shot from the flower's heart, and swallowed him whole.

Moments passed as Pudgers swallowed, giggled, and let out a satisfied burp. A look of triumph passed over the demon's features, and with a grin filled with tombstone teeth he began to advance on the prostrate Jessica.

To the outsider it would have appeared that Pudgers had triumphed. However, mere moments later, Pudgers' face turned a horrible shade of purple, and the demon doubled over to clutch at his stomach. Then it opened its mouth and vomited up a gout of what once had been the flower growing in its belly—something had ripped him apart from the inside. Among the regurgitated pieces, Dante rose to his feet with a smile despite the gore dripping from his face and hair.

"Take that, bitch," he said.

Pudgers began to topple over at that point, eyes glazing as the first signs of death began their subtle creep into its massive body. Dante ran over to Jess and carried her in his arms out of harms way.

As Pudgers fell behind them, Dante looked over Jess with mounting concern. Her face had gone from a healthy glow to a pasty gray color, and her hand… Dante had never seen anything like it. It appeared as though she had lost all of her muscle mass in the course of a single afternoon and that her skin had taken on a radical new shade: firecracker red. Her belting idea, however, had seemed to work, as the damage had not spread past the leather strap. But despite that piece of positive news, her chest did not look like it was moving and her eyes stood still beneath closed lids.

Leaning down, Dante pressed his ear to Jess' chest and was rewarded with the sound of a labored wheeze. Putting his fingers on her throat, he could feel the way her pulse fluttered with uncertain heartbeats and felt immense relief. To anyone else the slowness of her beating heart would have been a sign of bad things to come, but to Dante it felt normal.

All demon hearts beat slowly.

King joined Dante a few seconds later, whimpering and shaky as he looked over his comatose master. He hunkered down in the dust on his belly and nudged Jess' cheek with his nose. Her head flopped to one side, unresponsive.

Dante felt a flash of pity for the golden-eyed beast. "Shh, it's alright, boy. I'll take care of her." He reached out a hand to pat the dog on the head, but King's lips twitched back to reveal teeth even sharper than Dante had earlier noticed, and Dante hastily retracted the hand. "Sheesh, chill out. I'm going to save her, not eat her."

For the first time, Dante noticed that King had two dark gray strips of fur over his eyes that looked uncannily like eyebrows. The set of them made King's face appear to say 'Sure, you'll save her. And I'm going to fly to the moon in a teakettle. Just how dumb do you think I am, you idiot?'

Dante stared at King for a little while after that, lost in thought. Then Dante stood, took off his demon-juice-dripping jacket, and shook it out. He laid it over Jess, making sure to cover up her shriveled hand. "Yes, I _will_ fix her. But first…" He turned toward Pudgers who was laying face-down in the dirt like a fallen mastodon. "I've gotta deal with fatso over there."

Pudgers howled like a banshee as Dante delicately cut out its blind and ravaged eye with Rebellion's tip. "You know what my friends call me?" Dante said as he flung the soggy, bleeding mass off of the sword with a flick of the wrist. "They call me an artist. I can cut the wings off the fly in midair." He cut a long furrow down Pudgers' cheek, and Pudgers' howls grew louder. "If you don't cooperate with me, I can drag this out for hours... and hours... and hours..." He punctuated each word with a pinprick stab-and-twist that sent waves of blood coursing over the demon's face and into its one remaining eye.

"Stop it!" Pudgers cried, blubbering like a small child. "Stop hurting me!"

"I'll stop when you talk," said Dante, placing the blade beneath Pudgers' chin. He tilted up the demon's face so that its hate filled—but defeated—gaze rested solely on Dante. "So start talking."

Dante could see the wheels in Pudgers' brain turning, weighing talking with whatever consequences revealing information would reap. "What... what do you want to know?" it spat after a long, long moment of contemplation.

Dante let its face drop back into the dirt. "You've been confined to the Oakland place. Why?"

When Pudgers hesitated, Dante drew Ivory and fired a shot into Pudgers' empty eye socket. The effect was immediate—Pudgers screamed: "Sent! Sent!"

"Why?"

"T-to kill the traitor!"

Dante's eyes narrowed. "Oakland is a traitor? To who?"

Pudgers, at that point, looked around as if someone might overhear. "My master wants him dead," the fat demon whispered, fluids gurgling in its throat.

"And Jess—you said that she was 'the one.' What did you mean?"

Pudgers opened its mouth to speak, but said nothing. Its eye went so wide that Dante thought it would overflow its socket, but then he noticed the trickle of new blood rolling down the demon's forehead and said: "Pudgers?!"

The demon's head fell to pieces—two of them, as if someone had cut the demon's head in half from forehead to chin. Brain matter and blood pooled on the ground.

"Goddammit!" Dante cursed, jumping back as blood tried to roll over his boots. "Why me all the time? Just when I think I'm getting somewhere—"

If Dante hadn't made it a habit to dodge quickly flying objects that came at him out of his peripheral vision, he probably would have been missing his skull a millisecond later. As it were, he was able to drop to the dirt and roll out of harms way an instant before a dozen six-inch needles passed through the air where his head had been only a moment before. Drawing both of his guns, he was able to blast the second round of projectiles out of the air well before they reached him.

"Stay away from this," said a voice, and Dante had to squint into the setting sun to see his attacker.

Not that there was much to see. Although they were floating twenty feet off the ground (which was an impressive sight in and of itself) they were also clad in a black hooded cloak that concealed everything but their hands. The pale, long-fingered hands held a slender needle between each knuckle, and with practiced carelessness they threw both handfuls at Dante.

Dante jumped backward and the needles clattered harmlessly at his feet. "Watch it, pal!" he snapped, pointing both pistols at his attacker and advancing on him. "You could put an eye out!"

"Do not pry into matters you do not understand," the cloaked man said. His voice was deep and rich, the type of voice men coveted and women fell all over themselves for.

"Maybe you should educate me, then," Dante replied, and gestured at Pudger's carcass with one of his guns. "Were you the one who sent this thing to kill Oakland?"

The demon did not answer, but Dante's question did elicit some sort of response. The man folded his hands in front of him as if he were praying, and as he 'prayed' a light began to form above his head. It grew brighter and brighter, and with a loud 'bang' a spear of light broke away from the rest and flew toward Pudgers. The carcass immediately went up in flames, and moments later the corpse was little more than dust.

Dante let out a low whistle. "Impressive. Do you do fireworks, too?"

The cloaked man held out one of his hands, palm facing Dante, and the devil hunter tensed for another attack. No attack, however, came, and with a sweep of dark cloak the shrouded man above conjured a hole in the sky. The hole was an absence of light, a void in space and time that seemed to suck in illumination and kill it. Dante could feel the power radiating off of it like a chill breeze.

"Stay away from Jessica," the cloaked man hissed as he stepped backward into hole. The moment his body broke the surface it disappeared into the void without a trace. "Go back to where you came from, and never return."

"Hold it, pal!" Dante said. "You still haven't told me anything about your demon girlfriend!" He ran at the disappearing demon and leapt off the ground, stowing his guns and drawing Rebellion in one smooth motion. "Don't ditch the party so soon!"

But he was too late. The portal disappeared, its summoner right along with it, just as Dante go close enough to strike. The only evidence of their presence was the slight chill left behind by the light-consuming doorway.

Landing on the ground and feeling irritable, Dante sheathed rebellion and stared up at the empty sky. "Goddamn demon bullshit," he muttered, putting away his sword and moving back toward Jess. King had curled up next to her, his giant head pillowed on her chest. "Stupid cryptic warnings and disappearing acts. It's always the same, every time." He grimaced after running a hand through his hair and feeling the chunky demon goo that came off on his fingers. "And why is it that I get eaten so often? I mean, girls have told me that I taste alright but this is getting ridiculous."

King lifted his head off of Jess' chest and looked at Dante, then sneezed. The sneeze sounded almost—incredulous. Incensed. Skeptical.

"Listen, mutt," Dante said, hunkering down next to the dog. "I have no idea what's going on or who the hell that guy was—heck, I'm not even sure Jess is a human anymore—but I need to get her someplace safe so I can take a look at her." His nose crinkled, and he grinned. "I can't believe I'm talking to a dog about this, but... do you think you could lead us back to the truck?"

King's golden eyes did not waver, and for a moment Dante was sure his faith in King's intelligence was misplaced. But then the dog took one last look at Jess, lifted himself off the ground, and barked a short, booming bark that reverberated through the air. A moment later he jumped over Jess' body and darted off into the brush.

Dante didn't hesitate in following—he scooped Jess up into his arms, cradling her against his chest with care, and ran at top speed after King.

* * *

_The fact that this chapter was almost 3000 words exactly made me happy. Longest chapter yet? You betcha. The fact that I can't figure out how to turn on my new computer's spellchecker application makes me less happy. Good thing there's one built into Firefox.  
_

_Things get even more convoluted next chapter. Brace yourselves.  
_


	7. Chapter 7

Web

Chapter 7

King lead Dante on the quickest route back to Jess' truck—in a straight line. Although this made for a short journey, it also made for an arduous one. Dante had to use his shoulder as a battering ram to get past thick brush, and by the time he emerged next to the truck from a close copse of mesquite trees his coat sported a mess of scratches and gouges in the supple hide.

"And here I thought leather was good for ranchers," he said with disgust as he laid Jess down in the bed of the pickup. He jammed his fingers into one of Jess' jean's pockets and was rewarded by the truck's keys. "Let's get you home, Jessica," Dante murmured as he rounded the pickup and opened the driver's side door. It was an old vehicle with a bench front seat that could sit three people if they squished together, and the seats were covered in blue cloth that was so well worn it was almost gray. A box of shotgun shells and a small rifle lay on the floorboards. Dante settled in and slipped the key into the ignition, fumbling for a moment before locating the right key on the ring (_She's got, like, ten on here!_ he thought). The engine didn't catch immediately, and it took two false starts to get it going. Once it ran with a low growl that did not sound entirely healthy, Dante reached across the cabin and opened the passenger side door, hopped out of the car, and went to pick up Jess.

King had joined her in the pikup bed, and he sat with one dinner-plate paw pressed to Jess' shoulder. His golden eyes were fixed unwaveringly on her face, and when Dante neared the pair King's eyes flickered to the devil hunter in a too-intelligent way before resettling on Jess. A growl blossomed in the dog's chest, a low rumble of distant thunder.

Dante didn't get too close. "We need to get her somewhere safe," Dante said.

King didn't act like he had heard, and continued to growl.

"I need you to let me put her in the truck," Dante said, and reached out a hand. King immediately turned and snapped at Dante, hackles bristling like porcupine quills.

Dante did not flinch, and King's teeth sank into Dante's hand like hot needles through ice cream. The dog did not release Dante's hand, and their eyes met and held each other for a long, silent moment.

"I'm not going to hurt her," Dante told King. "I'm going to keep her safe. It's a lot to ask, but I need you to trust me. Okay?"

At first, Dante thought that the dog was just a dog, not the uncannily sentient being King had proved himself to be. But then King's jaws opened by a fraction on an inch and the teeth slid from Dante's hand with surgical precision. The dog licked Dante's blood off its lips before gently nosing Jess' cheek, and then it jumped out of the truck bed with fluid grace. The truck trembled and rose a good inch and a half when the dog's weight lifted off of it, and King slipped off into the underbrush as Dante wiped the blood off of his hand. The deep puncture wounds had already sealed.

Lifting Jess into his arms, Dante tried not to notice her too-hot skin and trembling body as he carried her over to the passenger side of the truck and deposited her on the seat. He shut the door, and the force of the slam made her slump bonelessly toward him. Her forehead came to rest on the window, and sweat soon dripped off of her brow to course down the glass.

Dante jogged to his side of the cab, jumped inside, put the truck in drive, and stepped on the gas only to realize that he had no idea where he was going. Before he even had a chance to swear, however, King appeared before the truck and began to trot off into the brush, looking back over his shoulder at Dante every few feet.

Dante didn't hesitate to follow. The truck trundled over the uneven terrain with the solid placidity of an aging elephant, but it never got stuck. Whether that was testimony to King's well-picked path or the quality of the truck was anyone's guess.

Soon the party emerged onto the dirt road they had originally met on, and the going became world's easier. King bolted down the path so fast Dante nearly lost sight of him around the road's curves, but thanks to the well-worn wheel ruts that had been dug into the ground over years of use the truck was able to keep up with the sprinting dog. Still, twice Dante had to pull Jess up out of the truck's floorboards when she was bounced around too much, and Dante suffered several bites to the tongue when an unexpected lurch sent him flying six inches out of his seat. He learned—eventually—to keep his jaw tightly shut, but not before tasting the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth.

The drive lasted an excruciating twenty minutes, but the brush soon began to thin out. The road grew more and more distinct, the wheel ruts deeper, and it led the party to a large clearing ringed with pecan trees. More dirt roads branched off into the trees, but Dante held little interest in them. He was, instead, intent on the house in the clearing's center.

It was a small house ringed on three sides by a screened-in wrap-around porch. The side of the house without the porch had a tin overhang that sheltered four vehicles from the sun: a large silver pickup truck that was in better condition that the one Dante was driving; a Crown Victoria town car in a deep shade of green that was at least twenty years old but still in pristine shape; a battered old jeep with a roll bar and a tattered canvas covering; and an red Honda ATV with mud caked on the tires.

Dante pulled the truck into a space under the overhang; it was just wide enough to accommodate the vehicle, and Dante had a feeling that this was its usual parking spot. He jumped out of the car and pulled Jess from the cab. Hefting her into his arms, he trotted out from under the overhang and noticed the two sets of stairs on either side of the line of cars. Both sets led up to doors leading into the screened-off porch, and it took a fancy bit of maneuvering to pull the left door open and step into the shady interior without dropping his precious cargo.

He was on one of the short sides of the house. There wasn't a door leading inside on that leg of the porch, so Dante had to go to the end of the walkway and make a left onto the longer stretch of porch. Here there were windows looking in on what appeared to be the living room, but the double glass doors leading inside were locked.

Swearing, Dante moved to the end of that stretch of porch and turned onto the shorter side opposite the one he had earlier investigated. Lucky for him there was a large wooden door leading inside on that side of the house, and a jiggle of the battered brass knob revealed it to be unlocked. He all but kicked the door down in his haste to get inside.

The door led into a laundry room, of sorts. It stretched off to Dante's left, occupied by a washer and dryer and a long, thin table covered with cleaning products and a toolbox. On the other side of the washer/dryer set was a white door propped halfway open—Dante could see a toilet and a sink in there, a fact he filed away for future reference. Directly across from him was a door going deeper into the house, and to his immediate right was a door that led into what Dante assumed was a closet.

He took the door in front of him. It led into a kitchen separated from the living room by a row of counters and the transition from red tile to hard wood flooring. Otherwise, the two rooms were one and the same. The kitchen had three counters, two of which were occupied by stove burners and a sink; the third was empty and served as the barrier between the kitchen and living room. A large wooden table took up space in the open center of the three counter tops. Three mismatched and battered sofas formed a ring around an old TV set in the living room, and in the middle a coffee table made of gnarled mesquite wood sported a pile of Guns & Ammo magazines. Light from the high windows and locked glass doors illuminated the dust motes drifting through the air, making the scene look like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Pictures of covered wagons and cowboys covered the walls, as did framed newspaper clippings and the occasional photograph.

Dante immediately laid Jess down on the longest couch and began to examine her hand. To his utmost relief, the red glow had not spread past her makeshift tourniquet. Rather, it had regressed to surround and fill the wound through which it had been injected. The wound itself, however, was disgusting to look at—it leaked red fluid too bright to be blood, and a cracking cake of red fluid filled the crater in Jess' hand.

"Gotta clean and bind this puppy," Dante murmured. He stood and walked into the kitchen, and with haste he began to throw open all the cabinets in his search for bandages. He found absolutely nothing. "What rancher doesn't have a first aid kit?" Dante said, grinding his teeth.

Something nudged the back of Dante's calf, and he jumped at the sight of King sitting sedately on his haunches. He was even more surprised by the white box marked with a blocky red cross that lay innocuously on the red tile floor.

"Did you get that for me?" Dante asked, stunned into asking the obvious,

King, by way of response, sneezed like a freight engine and nosed the kit onto the toe of Dante's boot.

Dante didn't waste any time pondering over the situation. Grabbing a large plastic bowl he had found during his raid of the kitchen, Dante snagged the first aid kit off the floor and took a roll of bandages and a bottle of antiseptic out of it. He poured the fluid into the bowl, soaked the bandages in it, then diluted the antiseptic with water from the sink. He also grabbed the horseshoe-patterned dishtowel by the sink before taking all of the items over to Jess.

Cleaning her hand was an exacting process, one which required all of Dante's attention. He didn't notice the sun going down, nor did he notice King pawing open the door Dante had come through and slipping outside. It was only after the dishtowel had become stained crimson with blood and the antiseptic-water was more pink than clear that he realized King was gone and that night had fallen.

White bandages and gauze covered the wound and kept it from leaking, but Dante couldn't do much else for Jess except make her comfortable. Reaching out a hand, he pulled the baseball cap off her head and set it on the floor. To Dante's surprise, a thick braid of dark hair fell to Jessica's chest like an ebony snake. It stretched nearly to her ribcage, and when whisps of it fell to frame her face it softened her long, narrow features into something close to attractive. Not pretty, exactly, but... handsome.

Yes, handsome was the right word.

Dante tucked a pillow behind Jess' head and found a blanket draped over the back of one of the other sofas to pull over her body. There wasn't anything else to do but wait until she woke up. Standing and stretching, he put the extra materials back in the first aid kit and poured the bloody astringent down the kitchen sink, then washed water through the dish towel and hooked it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs to dry. Looking at the newly cleaned cloth, Dante turned his head to sniff at his shoulder.

_Ew!_

An open archway at the border of the kitchen and the living room led into a shadowed hallway that ran parallel to the living room and kitchen. There was a door at each end of the hall—bedrooms, both of them—and two doors in the middle. One, Dante found, was a closet. The other, a bathroom with an old-fashioned sink, toilet, and a small shower. The floor-to-ceiling cupboard inside the bathroom had had its door taken off; the bare hinges had rusted after seeing the steam from many showers. The top four shelves were filled with towels: bath towels, beach towels, hand towels, washcloths, all of different colors and cloth types and conditions. The bottom shelf was filled with roll upon roll of toilet paper. A porcelain fixture on the wall above the sink held two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste.

_She's in a relationship, _Dante thought when he saw the extra toothbrush._ I wouldn't have guessed. _

He left his clothes crumpled on the floor as he turned on the shower and stepped in. The water never rose above lukewarm, but the goo ran down the shower despite his chattering teeth and the cheapness of the Walgreens-brand unisex shampoo. Feeling chilled but refreshed, he took a raging pink beach towel patterned with blue hibiscus out of the cupboard and regarded his clothes on the floor with distaste as he dried off.

"New clothes," Dante said, wrapping the towel around his waist. He did not relish the idea of feeling his filthy clothes rubbing against his clean skin. "Gotta get some clean clothes."

He went out into the hall, but before he could take two steps he tripped over something and fell headlong to the floor and nose to nose with King. The dog held a bowl in his mouth, and one of his eyebrows had risen in a 'What took you so long?' kind of way.

Twisting around to see what had tripped him, Dante found a huge bag of what appeared to be—

Dog food?

Dante looked back at King. "You want me to... feed you?" Dante asked. "Is that it?"

King dropped the metal bowl with a loud 'clang' and barked twice. Dante picked up the bowl and stared at it as he rose to his feet, one hand clutching the towel around his hips.

"Why the hell does the bowl say 'Peanut' on it?" he asked, staring at the letters carved painstakingly into the metal. He looked at King. "You don't look like a peanut to me."

King heaved to his feet and padded back into the living room. Dante followed in time to see the huge animal drop to its belly and sweep one dinner-plate paw beneath a rather ruffly pink sofa. A high-pitched yelp, to Dante's surprise, emanated out from under the couch.

King sat up at that point and put one of his paws on the couch cushions as if to say 'You see?'

The devil hunter couldn't help but sigh. "At least let me put on some pants, first."

King sneezed indignantly, but he got up and loped past Dante toward one of the bedrooms. Interestingly, its door was shut and Dante had to open it for the dog.

It was a child's room. Rodeo clown wallpaper and cartoon cowboys were the biggest decorating theme, and even though the cowboy-and-Indian bedspread had been recently laundered, it was moth eaten and threadbare. Toys and action figures and stuffed animals lined shelves covered with dust.

King pawed at the closet opposite the bed, and Dante opened it to find a wardrobe that did not belong to a child. The pants and shirts within—an ensemble made up almost exclusively of blue jeans and plaid button-down shirts—were a size too large even for Dante, but a plain black leather belt hanging off the back of the closet door fixed that problem before it became much of an issue.

The moment Dante had finished dressing himself in a red shirt and blue jeans, King hooked his teeth delicately into one of Dante's pant legs. The dog proceeded to drag the devil hunter back into the living room, and Dante dropped to his knees to peer beneath the couch's ruffly skirt.

A pair of eyes as large as silver dollars stared back at him.

Dante sat up. He looked at King. "That's Peanut, I guess."

King barked.

Dante thought about what to do for a minute before finding the bag of dog food and filling Peanut's bowl with it. Then he set the bowl in front of the couch and waited.

Results did not take long to manifest. The couch's ruffles quivered as a small black nose poked out and sniffed the air, and the nose was soon followed by a puppy's face. Ears as large as a bat's overshadowed liquid brown eyes, and when the rest of the puppy tumbled out Dante nearly laughed. It was as fat as any puppy Dante had ever seen, with a round little belly and stubby legs that looked too short to carry the rest of the dog. It was golden brown with a white stomach, paws, and tail, and as it began to wolf down the food Dante had poured it he felt a stab of recognition worm through him. He recognized the dog's breed, something with a country's name in it. A German Shepard? No. A Spanish something-or-other hound? No, definitely not.

The puppy finished its meal in record time, then clambered onto Dante's lap with a sigh. It rolled over, exposing its tummy, and Dante smiled as he gave the dog a belly rub. "Peanut's a good name for you," he said as the dog squirmed happily.

He shot a glance at Jessica. She still slept like the dead, and with one final pat Dante pushed Peanut out of his lap and walked into the kitchen. Both dogs trailed at his heels.

Luckily for Dante, there was a phone bolted into the wall next to the fridge. He picked it up and dialed home.

The phone rang twice before being answered. "Devil May Cry," a female voice said, and since the words sounded more pissed off than smoothly seductive, Dante surmised that it was Lady.

"Hey, Lady," Dante said. "Why the hell are you at the office? I haven't seen you in weeks."

There was a brief pause before: "You picked a great time to leave Trish behind, you jackass."

Dante winced. Trish had been his on-again, off-again partner for a long time, but since she had a habit of disappearing for months at a time without warning, Dante did not feel too bad leaving her with his agency for only a few days. Lady, on the other hand, was never around unless she needed something or Dante called for her help, mainly because she and Trish didn't see eye to eye. The fact that Lady and Trish were—presumably—working together in his absence did not bode well for the levels of demon activity back at home.

"What's going on?" he asked Lady.

"Demons. Lots of 'em. Trish called me this afternoon. You're gonna owe me a lot of what you're making on your little vacation."

Dante bristled. "Goddammit, Lady!"

"Hey, my services don't come cheap. You better get back here soon or the bills will pile up."

"Yeah, about that," Dante said, sighing in irritation. "Things down here are... well, they're pretty ..."

"Fucked up?" Lady supplied.

Dante chuckled. "Sounds about right, yeah. I'm going to stick around for a few days, see what I can uncover." He quickly filled her in on what he knew—the demon knowing Jess, Jess' suspiciously slow heartbeat, Oakland's request—but he left out the part about King's intelligence. Lady would just tell him to kill the dog. She was like that.

"I don't like this," she said the moment he stopped talking, "not one bit. And I think Oakland's hiding something."

"But not Jess?" Dante asked.

Lady paused. "I'm not too sure about her," she said. "She sounded kind of clueless to me, but keep your ear to the ground."

"Sure," he said. "Can I ask for a favor?"

"Mmm, might cost you. Think carefully."

"Can you look in the library for anything about demons injecting stuff into their victims?" Despite Lady's dark history with her father, she had inherited all of his possessions after his death, and that included his collection of demonic literature. She still used it to help pick apart cases, and the collection was probably the most valuable asset Dante had on his side.

"I'll see what I can do," Lady said.

"I'll call you in a couple of days," Dante told her. "Take care of yourself until then. Don't make any unnecessary risks, and—"

"Goddamn it, Dante, you sound like I've never done this before. Just hurry and finish up down there," Lady told him. "Trish is going to kill you if you leave her alone with me any longer than you have to."

Dante grinned. "Okay, okay, bye."

"Don't get killed," Lady said with acidic cheer, and hung up.

Dante placed the phone back into the cradle, disquieted.

Why did he get the feeling that Lady's final words would be much easier said than done?

* * *

_I've been in a funk for the past few days, but despite that I am fairly happy with this chapter. Hope you liked it. Please review and tell me how I'm doing._

_Oh, and no conflicts have been resolved yet. Dante thinks he has a few things figured out, but he has a lot to learn._


End file.
